A massive growth in the document wire-binding sector over the past five years, has led to an urgent call to sort out these difficulties. Wire-binding specialist Renz believes that it has the answer, in the form of the Renz Autopunch (AP) 360, a machine that is designed specifically to punch tricky stocks and sticky stacks with a high level of accuracy and reduced manpower.
In the beginning
The AP 360 has been evolving for 10 years, according to Renz sales and marketing manager Daniel Pooley. After an extended period of R&D, the original Autopunch was first launched back in 2000. Unfortunately, it was notoriously unreliable. Renz took it back to the drawing board and relaunched it at Ipex 2002 as a basic automated punch, in which shape it was more successful with UK copyshops, quickprinters and implants.
Its later relaunch at Ipex 2006 follows Renz’s addition of eight new feeding and stacking configurations. All eight are aimed at the burgeoning short-run or on-demand wire-binding market, which, according to Pooley, has “gone mad” over the past four years. “We’ve seen a lot of activity in the area of on-demand document production,” he says. “And digital presses have become much faster and better quality, plus they can now print on a much wider range of stocks than just a few years ago. We had to design a machine that could handle anything that was thrown at it.”
The secret of the AP 360’s improved paper handling is in its infeed. A non-automated punch typically requires an operator knocking up the book. The AP 360, instead, uses a belt-drive system to knock each section of the book into the punch area, a process that combines knocking-up and stack transport, and by doing so, eliminates the need for an operator to knock up the stack.
Operation is straightforward. The books’ individual pages are stacked into a hopper at the infeed end. Usually, the beginning and end of each book in the stack is marked either with inserted covers, or with separation tabs or sheets. The feeder, an inverted pyramid – known in Renz’s factory as a “beak”, with rubber pads on the top and bottom jaw – picks a user-defined section depth off the top of the stack. At this point, users can have the added help provided by the AP 360’s only optional extra: an air-blowing system designed to help separate tricky stocks by aiming a jet of pressure-blown air between the top stack sheets.
Following the sheet separation, a belt drive takes the section and feeds it into the punching die. Here, a male set of punch pins punches the sheets through against a female anvil. The section is transported out of the punching area and rotated around a drum to reverse its facing direction – so the book, as a whole, maintains its sequence – it is then held in a reassembly area until the necessary number of sections has been punched.
Various delivery units can be hooked up to the end of the machine, including a deep pile delivery, an automatic stacking table or a jogger. Pooley says the system that works best for most printers is a continuous “paternoster” feed into a jogger. The operator then picks the completed book out of the delivery unit and stacks it prior to binding. Tabs are also fairly easy to handle on the AP 360, but each end of a tabbed sheet must have an 11mm shoulder to defend the tabs from the knocking-up devices.
Manual versus automated
The AP 360 comes in two different models: the manual version requires a fraction more makeready. The operator adjusts the sidelays and the belt-drive according to the size of the sheets by inching a sheet through the machine. The pick depth is then selected on a handwheel, with the whole process taking between five and 10 minutes. The automated AP 360 is made ready via a touchscreen, into which paper sizes are programmed, together with pick depth, and the machine sets its own sidelays and belt-drive. This takes less than five minutes, and there is also the facility to store as many as 500 jobs’ makeready details.
While the infeed hopper has a high stack capacity (around 400mm) there is no continuous feed on the AP 360’s manual model, meaning the machine must be stopped to reload – on the automated version, there is a continuous feed option.
A punch, even an automated punch like the AP 360, is typically an unintelligent machine: there is no facility to programme it to recognise the beginning or end of a book. The stack of pages in the infeed is undifferentiated to the punch, which simply picks the pre-defined depth of section from the stack and forwards it on; it’s down to the operator to recognise a complete book at the delivery end, and to pick it out for sending on to the binder. Binding is almost always a separate process: the punch operates much faster than the binder and the usual configuration in heavy-throughput environments is to have two or more binders fed by a single punch. Renz sells a range of binders, including the RSB 360, a model matched in size to the AP 360, with a similarly semi-automatic operation.
Both versions of the AP 360 have the option of a QSA (quick size adjustment) die: this ingenious device allows the user to deselect individual pins in the punching row without needing to remove the die from the machine. Alternatively, Renz supplies a range of standard hardened-steel and brass dies, including 3:1 round and square hole, 2:1 round and square hole, coil and plastic comb punches, together with a range of perforation dies and two- and four-hole dies – the latter replaces the need to drill A4 sheets. Renz can also supply custom dies, manufactured at its plant in Germany. But buyers should be aware that none of the dies is supplied as standard with the AP 360: all are supplied separately at a cost of between £2,500 and £4,500 depending on the die’s configuration.
As Renz is a company that supplies, in large part, the office market, the AP 360 sits at the top end of its professional punching range. It’s Renz’s only free-standing punch (it’s on castors so that it can be wheeled around the printroom as required, and handily it uses only a standard single-phase 13amp electricity supply).
Little and large
Its smaller-capacity siblings are the DTP 340A (a desktop hand-fed semi-automatic model) and the DTP 340M (another desktop machine, but without the semi-automated punching). Above the AP 360, Renz sells the Kugler range of punches – which are not necessarily heavier-duty, says Pooley, but are able to handle larger formats.
Since its Ipex launch, the AP 360 has found favour with conventional offset printers, finishers, digital print rooms and inplants, which collectively have installed an average of more than one each month. “We see a good, strong market for this machine,” says Pooley. “It fits perfectly the gap between manual and automatic processes, and saves time and manpower as well as being able to handle difficult stocks. It’s already one of our bestsellers, and we see that continuing well into the future.”
SPECIFICATIONS
Max sheet size 360x360mm
Min sheet size 100x85mm
Max punching thickness 3.5mm
Stock thickness 60gsm up to 400gsm (depending on stock type)
Max speed 100 punches per minute
Price £26,500 (basic machine); £2,500-£4,500 per punching die
Contact Renz UK 01707 270001 www.renz.com
THE ALTERNATIVES
James Burn Mag K50
This is James Burn’s closest offering to the AP 360, but there are a number of differences. It’s not mobile, although it uses standard single-phase electricity. It punches a wider sheet than the AP 360, but its maximum punching thickness is 2.5mm. There are no retractable pins in the dies, and the range of die profiles is more limited – but James Burn produces various die profiles, including the standard square and round holes, perforation dies and tab cutters.
Max sheet width 500mm
Min sheet width n/s
Max punching thickness 2.5mm
Stock thickness not specified
Max speed 80 punches per minute
Price n/a
Contact James Burn International 00 33 233 842150 www.jamesburn.com
GBC AP2 Ultra
This is an automated punch. Freestanding, and on lockable castors, it uses a standard 240V electricity supply. While there are no retractable pins, die changing is tool-less and takes just three minutes. There’s also a continuous load and unload feature, and a stack height of 2,500 sheets (70gsm). It is slightly slower than the AP 360 with a speed of 56,000 sheets per hour. A range of 11 standard punch patterns includes round and square holes, ovals and holes for coil binding, but no perforating.
Max sheet width 304mm
Min sheet width 139mm
Stock thickness 70-300gsm
Max speed around 70 punches per minute
Price n/a
Contact GBC (UK) Ltd 0870 2255 422 www.gbceurope.com
Renz Autopunch 360
Punching can be either a sticky process or a slippery one - and very occasionally it can be both. The job of separating a stack of printed sheets, punching them and reassembling them accurately, ready to be wire-bound, is made harder by static, which causes the sheets to stick together, or by slippery stocks, which separate too easily and slide around.
